


Timeline

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Bloodline - Claudia Gray
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:57:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7306438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This was Leia's chance to ask whether Han had heard from Ben or Luke (although she knew he wouldn't have)</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Darth Vader isn't the only Skywalker family secret Leia is keeping.  He might not even be the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timeline

Maybe it was the silent black-clad security personnel. Maybe it was R2-D2, switched off and coated in mud, floating between them. Maybe it was the expression on Varish Vicly's face, grim and determined but clearly on the verge of tears.

Han definitely had a bad feeling about this.

"Senator Organa," Vicly said, then stopped. Leia wasn't one, not anymore.

She bit her lip as Leia moved to comfort her, putting one hand on her golden fur and asking, "What's wrong?"

Vicly took a deep breath. "Is there somewhere secure where we could talk?"

"Of course," said Leia, steering her towards the conference room in their apartment. The Resistance might be the worst-kept secret in the New Republic, but Han wasn't entirely sure that wasn't how Leia and Akbar and Statura wanted it. This way, the New Republic got plausible deniability and to face off against whatever goombas were running around trying to resurrect the Empire this time, and the Resistance got all the censure when things went wrong. It wasn't the kind of deal Han would have made, but he hadn't been the one making it. The security guys dumped the pallet that carried R2 just inside the apartment's door and took up guard positions outside it. Han locked it after them just because he could.

Vicly didn't seem to care. She fumbled a card out of one sleeve and, when Han sealed the conference room after him, held it above the reader.

"There was," she said. "Helu Antilles--a year ago--she went there, and when she found what she found, she contacted her planetary government, and they sent a squad out. This is the official recording."

She set the card in, and it began to play. There was no sound, just a landscape that looked vaguely familiar to Han--a cluster of dilapidated huts, and a whole lot of mud like the mud on R2--

And that was when Han realized that this was where Luke had been training his new generation of Jedi, that he'd seen those huts ten years ago when he'd dropped Ben off and that some of what he'd thought was oddly dried mud was actually bodies in brown padawan uniforms and advanced stages of decomposition. He felt a sick twist of fear in his stomach, but--

"We're still collecting tissue samples and contacting guardians," said Vicly. She wasn't looking at the holo, or at Leia. It seemed to help her follow what sounded like a script, or maybe she was quoting a report. "Not all of the students have been accounted for. One of the dead is wearing armor that matches the description of an extremist fringe sect intelligence has heard some rumors about, some sort of self-styled Knighthood. So far we have found no trace of your brother or your son."

Han let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and looked away from the holo to Leia, who was very white in the face and nodding gravely.

Of course Ben wasn't dead. There was no way anything like that could happen to Ben without Leia knowing. When Ben was born, it had always seemed like Leia knew why Ben was crying, sometimes even before he started to fuss, and could always get him to stop and give her one of his dopey baby grins or go back to sleep. Han, on the other hand, always seemed to do exactly the wrong thing, cycling between a fresh bottle and a new diaper and a creaky wookiee lullaby as Ben, placated by none of them, screamed his surprisingly powerful lungs out at him, as if Han was being stupid on purpose. It had gotten a little better when Ben had started to talk, but he didn't always come out and say it, and even when he did, he'd still throw tantrums with Han, and never did with Leia. It had only become clear _why_ Leia was so much better at this than Han was--despite being chronically exhausted by the New Republic's demands on her, despite spending less time overall with him than Han did, in those first few months before Han started flying missions again--one day when Han had taken Ben to the playground in an attempt to shake him from one of his horrible moods, only to have the kid shout, in the middle of one of those go-rounds and a bunch of voters, "I _hate_ the Centrists!"

Luke had taken a break from training Jedi to teach Leia how to shield, although if you asked Han that only made Ben moodier and more difficult. But shields or no shields, Leia would have felt Ben's death anywhere in the universe. Han was surprised she hadn't felt whatever this had been--

No.

Leia was thanking Vicly for letting them know, for assuring them they'd be the first to hear further developments, that they'd have been the first to hear about this, but she'd thought it best to tell them in person. Thanking her for keeping her talons crossed that Luke and Ben were safe. Offering her a drink--denied--before she left, eyes wet, having given Leia one last hug.

"Well," said Han, "I sure could use a drink."

Leia looked at him--and then away.

He got it for himself, surprised at how steady his hands were, how smoothly the brandy poured. How calm his voice was when he said, "You knew."

"Yes," Leia said quietly. "When it happened. Ben-- I could feel how upset he was. How scared. How angry." Her eyes met his. "And Luke, Luke sent an apology in the aftermath. I didn't quite know the details, but I knew something had happened. I knew they both left the planet soon after."

"And that was why you wanted to go flying around the galaxy in retirement," said Han. "It wasn't for the fun of it. You wanted to go looking for them--"

"Yes." Han closed his eyes, heard the clink of glass on glass as she poured herself one too. "Although... sometimes, with everything else demanding my attention, it was easy to forget it had ever happened. Ben was unhappy before it, unhappy after it. He's unhappy now. And if I didn't think about it, I could just believe he was still at the Jedi Academy and resenting every second of it." Han opened his eyes and, yes, she was smiling, smiling sadly, as if their sullen teenage--no, not teenage, not anymore--kid hadn't barely escaped being slaughtered. "I couldn't _do_ anything about it, he doesn't want me to know where he is. But I could do something for the New Republic. So I stayed here, and let him know that--" Her breath caught. "That we love him, wherever he is."

"Okay," said Han. "So I get that he's off sulking, and I get that you didn't share this with the New Republic at large because maybe these Knight creeps thought everyone was dead, and you thought Ben and Luke would be safer if it wasn't public knowledge they were still alive, but, damn it, Leia, you could have shared it with _me_."

Leia looked up at him, spots of color in her cheeks, her eyes and face hard. "I could have shared it with you," she said, and drained her drink in one go, "or you could have gone to visit your son once in the last eight years."

"Don't pin this on--" It had been a long journey through space, two months and change from the Hosnian system to where Luke had set up his academy, and Han had only made it once, to drop Ben off. He'd said he'd come back--now that he thought of it, Leia had cleared her schedule for an entire year when Ben would be turning eighteen, and they were going to go visit together. But he hadn't been thinking of that, at the time, when he promised he'd be back. He'd been using it as a way to get Ben to let go, because when Han had been about to leave, Ben had hugged him like a Karasjen suckerfish and begged him not to--this, after barely talking to him the whole ride out. Ben had been crying in that way he had, huge gulping sobs he could barely get words around, and Han had been--well, he'd been embarrassed. What kind of thirteen-year-old did that to his dad? What kind of thirteen-year-old wasn't excited about learning to use his mystical powers to do whatever kids did these days, with all the other kids at the Academy, lifeforms from all over the freaking galaxy, and his uncle the hero, on this far-flung half-explored planet? What was _wrong_ with his kid?

Eight years, Leia had said. He'd have been gone, in hiding, when he was eighteen, so Leia had stayed on Hosnia Prime, and worked. That left two years, and Han's only commitment had been the Sabers. "You still should have told me," he said, wondering if Ben had somehow foreseen the attack, if that was why he had been so--well, so _Ben_. "All this time, my son was in hiding from some maniacs who kill Jedi, and you didn't tell me. Why, Leia?"

"Because," Leia whispered, and she sounded more scared than he'd heard her sound in a long, long time, "I thought that if he thought no one else knew what he'd done, he still might come home."

It took Han a moment before what that meant hit him like a torpedo that crashed straight through all shields and set the ship's alarm systems screeching like Threepio when someone used the wrong fork. 

Ben had foreseen the attack, all right.

Han felt sick, and then he was turning around, heading for his jacket and blaster where they hung by the door.

Behind him she said, "No."

Behind him she said, "Han, wait." 

But she didn't try to come after him either.

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently this is how I reconcile Ben's age in Bloodline with the TFA script direction that Han hasn't seen Ben as an adult because Han being the galaxy's #56,270,894 dad isn't enough.
> 
> I'm sorry.


End file.
